Ideology yields to new vision in Olmert's offer to Palestinians

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Page A - 15

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Standing by the grave of Israel's famously pragmatic founding prime minister, Israeli leader Ehud Olmert set out a new vision of Israeli policy, abandoning ideology in favor of an attempt at peacemaking that David Ben-Gurion himself might have drafted -- peace, statehood and prosperity for the Palestinians in return for an end to violence.

In his speech Monday, Olmert performed an abrupt about-turn on the question of releasing Palestinian prisoners, endorsing a mass prisoner swap in return for the freedom of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. He pulled back Israeli troops from Gaza, allowing a fragile cease-fire to take effect, and ordered the army to hold its fire even when Palestinian rockets continued slamming into southern Israel.

"This is a significant opening that President George W. Bush should pounce on when he visits the Middle East this week, so that the Palestinian-Israeli diplomatic flirting can be expanded into serious negotiations," said commentator Rami G. Khouri.

The Palestinian response to Olmert's overtures was predictably skeptical, with Hamas at first dismissing the speech as a "conspiracy." But Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah party welcomed the speech, describing it as "useful."

Abbas' chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said it shows the Israeli prime minister now has confidence that negotiations with the Palestinians can be fruitful. "I believe Mr. Olmert knows he has a partner, and that is President Abbas. He knows that to achieve peace and security for all, we need to shoot for the endgame." Reinforcing the notion of Olmert and Abbas as potential negotiating partners, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will meet, separately, with both of them today.

Perhaps the most interesting Palestinian comment this week came from Khaled Mashaal, the hard-line Hamas political leader, who spoke on Sunday about establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza instead of the policy set out in the Hamas charter -- that Israel must be completely destroyed.

"When the leaders of Israel and Hamas in the same weekend offer each other long-term peace deals, you just know in your bones that we are passing through a potentially historic moment," said Khouri, executive editor of the Beirut-based Daily Star.

Emad Gad, senior researcher on Israel at the al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said he believes Hamas will tell its supporters a state limited to the West Bank and Gaza would be only a step toward liberating land inside Israel. "But I think if they accept this solution, it will be the permanent solution," Gad said. "I think they will have this article (calling for Israel's destruction) in their charter for 10 years -- but after that, this article will be finished."

By endorsing a prisoner release and refraining from retaliating for sporadic rocket attacks even after Israel's cease-fire went into effect on Sunday, Olmert was effectively negotiating -- albeit indirectly -- with the hated militants of Hamas, a high-risk strategy.

The new approach is in stark contrast to Israel's decision to attack the Gaza Strip after Shalit's capture on June 25, and the subsequent decision to attack Lebanon after Hezbollah killed eight Israeli soldiers and captured two more in a cross-border ambush on July 12. In both cases, Israel demanded the unconditional release of its soldiers and vowed it would not negotiate with their captors or release prisoners in exchange for their freedom. All three soldiers are still being held.

"The prime minister said during this last Lebanese war that releasing terrorists is just a prize to the terrorist groups, and he was right," said Avi Bachrach, whose son Ohad was killed by Palestinian militants near Jericho 11 years ago. "That's why we started a war. How can he now look into the eyes of all of the parents who lost children in the war and to the families who have injured soldiers and say that it was all in vain?"

Israeli commentators are divided over the reasons behind Olmert's sudden change of heart. Jerusalem Post columnist Anshel Pfeffer wrote that Olmert is desperately trying to salvage his government, whose popularity is sinking fast in the polls.

"He is leading a discredited administration that is perceived by a wide majority as having dismally failed in the Lebanon war and not done anything right since," said Pfeffer.

Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, said the government was forced to abandon the idea of a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank -- its main pledge during the last election campaign -- after the summer's bruising war against Hezbollah.

"Since the war in Lebanon this summer, it has been quite clear that Olmert's government lacks a political agenda," said Baskin. "Governments without an agenda and without a political horizon that provides hope to the people do not survive for very long. Olmert had continued to hope that he could revive his plan for unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank, but that has grown increasingly unpopular in Israel. Recognizing the need for a new agenda, Olmert understood that he could not present anything new without a calming of the violence, and he has finally understood that a cease-fire must be bilateral."

With his popularity plummeting in the wake of the summer's war in Lebanon, which many Israelis regard as an embarrassing failure, Olmert's abandonment of ideology could be the biggest step toward peace in a decade. A number of forces have coalesced to make this a good time for movement where none was possible before.

Hamas has accepted that it cannot continue to govern the Palestinian Authority, despite its landslide victory in the parliamentary elections in January. Its refusal to abide by past agreements with Israel, its open commitment to continued violence and its refusal ever to negotiate peace triggered an international boycott, which has left the government bankrupt and more than a million Palestinians without a regular income.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has agreed to resign his post, and Hamas has agreed in principle to participate in a coalition government that would be headed by a nonpolitical figure. On-and-off talks between Hamas and Fatah to form a unity government are unlikely to be resolved soon. But Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, also heads the Palestine Liberation Organization, which recognized the Jewish state in 1993 -- making him the only Palestinian empowered to negotiate with Israel. It's an arrangement that suits Hamas, which still does not want to be directly involved in peace talks, and also suits the Israelis, who will not talk to Hamas unless its leaders explicitly renounce violence and recognize Israel.

In his speech on Monday, Olmert offered a mass release of Palestinian prisoners in return for Shalit's return. The prime minister said that if the Palestinians form a new government willing to negotiate, he will start peace talks aimed at dismantling settlements and withdrawing Israeli forces from large parts of the West Bank in order to create "an independent and viable Palestinian state ... with full sovereignty and defined borders.

"We, the state of Israel, will agree to the evacuation of many territories and the settlements that we built there. This is extremely difficult for us, like the splitting of the Red Sea. We will do it for real peace," he said.

Palestinian commentators tried to understand what effect Olmert's offer would have on their own political landscape. Analyst Muhammad Hawwash, writing in the new English-language Palestine Times, said Olmert stopped short of "launching a political initiative," but placed just enough on the table to give the cease-fire a chance. He said it could help Palestinian leaders persuade the militant factions to stop attacking Israel -- if only to stop military reprisals -- and release desperately needed funds to pay the salaries of Palestinian government workers.

"The cease-fire might in fact survive, since several parties need it," wrote Hawwash. "Hamas wants to demonstrate that it controls the firepower, and the Palestinian president wants to maneuver Palestinian political life around ... change, adaptation and the unknown."

Anticipated changes in U.S. Middle East policy may indeed have been preying on Olmert's mind. Since the Democratic victory in the midterm elections and leaks from the report on Iraq by the Iraq Study Group, Israeli leaders have been concerned that the Bush administration will temper its backing for Israel's tough approach with overtures to the Arab world -- including Syria, which sponsors Hezbollah, Hamas and other Palestinian extremists. Bush reportedly is being advised by other Middle Eastern leaders to resume efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio, which would necessarily mean lifting the embargo on Hamas.

"Olmert may have heard about this change during his recent visit to Washington and decided to take some pre-emptive steps in that direction," said Baskin.

Israeli olive branch: Olmert touts peace push

NY DAILY NEWS
TUESDAY 29 NOVEMBER

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a dramatic bid for peace with the Palestinians yesterday, offering wide-ranging concessions and recognition of a Palestinian state in return for a permanent end to violence.

Olmert said if the Palestinians formed a new government that was willing to negotiate with Israel, he would start peace talks aimed at dismantling settlements and withdrawing Israeli forces from large parts of the West Bank in order to create "an independent and viable Palestinian state ... with full sovereignty and defined borders."

"We, the state of Israel, will agree to the evacuation of many territories and the settlements that we built there. This is extremely difficult for us, like the splitting of the Red Sea. We will do it for real peace," he said.

Speaking at the graveside of Israel's founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Olmert also offered a mass release of Palestinian prisoners in return for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, abducted on June 25.

Olmert urged the Palestinians to abandon radicalism and said they were standing at "an historic crossroads."

He also ordered the Israeli Army not to respond for a second day as rockets slammed into southern Israel, breaking a fragile day-old truce.

Spokesmen for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Olmert's overtures, but the Hamas-led government dismissed them as "a conspiracy ... a maneuver."

Only a few weeks ago, Olmert dismissed talk of a prisoner swap and demanded Shalit's unconditional release. The sudden about-face came after five months of violence and a sudden buildup of Israeli military forces around Gaza which appeared to convince the Palestinians they would be invaded if they did not end the daily rocket attacks.

The Israelis also told the Palestinians that a ceasefire was the only way to end an economic boycott that has reduced the Palestinian Authority to near bankruptcy.

US firms turn to Israel as outsourcing alternative

Besides lower costs, nation boasts pool of educated, English-speaking workers

BOSTON GLOBE
November 24, 2006

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

JERUSALEM -- For US firms looking to slash costs by farming out work abroad, eyes may turn first toward bargains like Bangalore or Beijing.

Luckily for Israel, it has other charms.

In the past year there has been greater enthusiasm for outsourcing services to Israel, which differentiates itself from India and the Far East by offering a vast pool of highly educated workers who are native English speakers and share a cultural affinity with the West.

The heightened interest comes as the government is offering firms a $200-per-month subsidy for each worker employed by foreign companies. While Israel's workforce still doesn't come as cheap as its rivals, salaries are far less than in America. And perhaps surprisingly, all the figures for economic growth, credit ratings, and investment this year indicate the instability in Israel has not affected business at all.

"In the past 18 months, 700 new jobs have been created in outsourcing in Jerusalem alone. The industry is growing rather rapidly, from 100 employees three years ago to more than 1,500 today," said Jafar Sabbah, codirector of StartUp Jerusalem, a nonprofit created to stimulate employment.

MyPrepForce, a company based in Westport, Conn., that provides Web-based programs for bookkeeping and payroll services for accounting firms and large corporations in the United States, previously outsourced financial functions to India but now says work will be handled by Outsource2Israel.com in Jerusalem.

"Israelis have better English language fluency -- especially since so many are US expats or have American parents -- than in other countries; their customs and values are similar to those of US citizens; the infrastructure and security in Israel is much better than in other foreign countries; and Israelis have a high work ethic," said Greg Fern, executive vice president of MyPrepForce, a division of FSO Technologies Inc., also based in Westport.

Eli Kazhdan, a former chief of staff for the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade who is now a consultant to outsourcing companies in Israel, said most of the jobs are medium-to-high-end call center work, legal and paralegal, and information technology. Immigrants have become a major resource because they speak a variety of languages that can benefit a host of international companies. "Israel is in a unique position due to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from around the world," Kazhdan said. "This is where Israel has its competitive edge. We are able to cut costs without compromising on quality."

In a 2005 survey, consulting firm AT Kearney ranked Israel among the most attractive places worldwide for outsourcing. Last year The Economist ranked Israel in the top 20, and Red Herring magazine dubbed Jerusalem a "new hot spot" for outsourcing.

Though wages in Israel are generally lower than what companies pay in the United States, Israel is no cost rival for places such as India. According to a 2006 survey by consultants at Catalyst IT Partners Ltd., the average fully loaded cost per seat per hour for a call center in Israel was $19, compared with $12 in India and $40 in the United States. The survey also reported typical contact center wages were $7 per hour in Jerusalem, compared with $3 in Mumbai and $10 on the US East Coast.

In Modi'in Illit, a settlement of 22,000 people just inside the West Bank, 150 women are employed at CityBook Services performing paralegal work such as checking lease contracts and property titles for clients across the Northeastern United States. CityBook's arrival in this ultra-Orthodox Jewish, or "haredi," township halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv triggered a small social revolution, as 50 percent of families are below the poverty line and many of the men are full-time students in yeshiva seminaries, drawing social benefits. The community is not a normal part of the Israeli workforce because it has been stigmatized as insular, nonproductive, and too dependent on welfare.

Chaya Milgraum, 22, a mother of two originally from Worcester, said she began working at CityBook two years ago because she and her husband, who was then a full-time yeshiva student, "really needed it."

"There was a little opposition from my parents and my parents-in-law because they're not used to the woman going out to work; only the husbands go to work," Milgraum said. "At the beginning it was hard but then they said, 'You know what? It's good for you -- you're getting out, you're taking care of yourself, and you feel good about going to work.' "

CityBook gives the women four months training and pays well above minimum wage in a modern working environment that respects their religious values. This means strict physical separation between men and women, modest dress by both sexes, kosher kitchens, , and time allowed for prayer. "These people would not work in a Tel Aviv high-tech company because it just doesn't fit with their lifestyle," Kazhdan said.

Joe Rosenbaum, an ultra-Orthodox Jew from Lakewood, N.J., founded CityBook three years ago as an offshoot of Madison Title, his insurance and property-services firm also based in Lakewood. He said pay is 40 to 50 percent lower in Israel than in the United States, but CityBook pays 60 percent.

Rosenbaum plans to create 40 jobs for the ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem.

"There's a tremendous reliability, work ethic, and commitment," he said. "They are very careful not to waste time and are extremely grateful for the opportunity afforded them, so they go way beyond the call of duty. It's an unbelievable solution."

IDT Global, a Jerusalem unit of US communications giant IDT Corp., leads Israel's outsourcing sector with 1,000 employees operating call centers for clients around the world in a wide variety of languages and providing a broad range of outsourced services from graphic design to accountancy and paralegal work. IDT Global says its clients include AOL, Western Union, Sears, OneTel, and Barnes & Noble.

Lloyd Lurie, chief operating officer of IDT Global, said his staffing level has leaped 50 percent in the past 18 months with increasing demand from the United States, Canada, Britain, and Europe. He said Israel was unique in being able to offer multilingual operations under one roof, saving a company from having to farm out each language operation to a different country.

"If someone is looking for a generic, low-cost provider, let them go to India or the Philippines -- we're not competing," he said. "What we provide is a quality of work that is the same quality as they would find in their own native country, but the prices are lower.

"In Israel we have immigrants who lived in these countries, so they are not only familiar with language and speak it at a high level, but they are also familiar with the culture as well . . . It's very difficult to provide from other places. There's only so much you can learn from a crash course."

Ancient treasures lure modern thieves

With Israeli, Palestinian authorities busy with other matters, Bedouins rob tombs much as forefathers did

Mountasser, a 7-year-old Bedouin, displays artifacts that he and his siblings found near their West Bank village. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, November 24, 2006
Page A - 18

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Herodion, West Bank -- At least two nights a week, Abu Moussa, the Bedouin leader of Herodion, takes his sleeping bag, tools and a small group of men and heads into the mountains to practice the trade he learned from his father and grandfather before him -- robbing the treasures of ancient tombs.

It's a tradition that goes back centuries, and these days it is considered illegal by both Israeli and Palestinian police. But as the Palestinian economy crumbles in the face of Israeli security restrictions and crippling international sanctions against the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority, ancient treasures buried in the biblical landscape have become a major source of income for many West Bank residents.

"The mountains and valleys in this area are full of caves. All the boys and men in the village search the caves to look for antiquities, and they bring whatever they find to me, because I am the mukhtar, the leader of the village, and I know about all these things," said Abu Moussa, 50, displaying a table covered with treasures, including a 3,000-year-old Canaanite earthenware jug, several oil lamps, decorated bowls, and fistfuls of ancient coins, weights and arrowheads.

"I take everything and I sell it to dealers in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and we share the proceeds among all the village. This is how we support ourselves and make a living," he said.

The tiny Bedouin village has only 150 inhabitants, who until recently earned a living as shepherds who tended the flocks and sold milk and cheese, or as day laborers in Israel. But since the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, began in September 2000, they have been unable to enter Israel, and the spiraling economic crisis has drastically reduced demand for their dairy products.

"We used to have 700 sheep in the village; now we have only about 100 left. I myself had more than 100 sheep, and now I have only 15. We had to sell them or kill them for food because we have no money," said Abu Moussa, who would not allow his full name to be used.

"Today these treasures are the main income for the village," he said. "The most expensive piece I ever found was a coin from Bar Kochba, the Jewish prince at the time of the Romans. I sold that one for $15,000. But usually even the most expensive items are only worth about $300 or $400, and we might find one or two of them in a month," he said.

Sleeping by day and moving at night to escape the scrutiny of Israeli army patrols and Palestinian antiquities police, Abu Moussa and his fellow villagers move through the mountains and valleys around Wadi Kareitoun, which winds from the spectacular first-century palace of Herodion through the Judean desert to the Dead Sea about 15 miles away.

The barren landscape is perforated with thousands of natural caves, many of them used as burial tombs dating back to the Canaanite period about 3,000 years ago. Some are still sealed. Others were robbed long ago, perhaps by Abu Moussa's ancestors. Many contain the bones of poor hermits and simple shepherds, but others were used to bury wealthy people whose worldly goods accompanied them to the grave.

"Buried along with the bones are all sorts of coins, jugs and jewelry," said Abu Moussa. "The ancient people believed in reincarnation, and they thought that if they buried their possessions in the grave, they would have them to use when they came back to life. There are jugs and bowls and lamps. Sometimes the jugs and other items are full of gold coins.

"Everything has been preserved because the caves were sealed after the burial and the water has never touched it. Only the metal objects have survived in the open fields, because other items have decayed over the centuries," he said. "Many coins were dropped on the ground, and as the rains come, they are washed up to the surface and we can find them."

The Israel Antiquities Authority has been trying for years to stop the activities of scavengers like Abu Moussa, but without success. The removal of archaeological artifacts, valuable or not, from ancient tombs destroys their scientific value and hinders detailed research.

Under Israeli law, antiquities must all be registered and cannot be sold to private collectors. But the law is widely flouted, and vast quantities of ancient treasures are spirited out of the country to collectors abroad willing to pay ever-increasing prices. The Antiquities Authority has a special unit, with police powers, that patrols the areas under Israeli control to catch tomb robbers, and an intelligence network that tries to trace the movement of antiquities dug up from the Holy Land. It also cracks down on dealers suspected of trading in pilfered treasure.

Since the withdrawal of Israel from large areas of the West Bank, the outbreak of the intifada and the building of the separation barrier, Israel has just about given up trying to police desert areas like the one where Abu Moussa operates.

Not just Bedouins are in on the search for antiquities -- impoverished Palestinians, too, take part in the illegal searches. The Palestinian Authority has a special Tourist and Antiquities Police unit, but they were never very vigilant in protecting artifacts, and with the breakdown of Palestinian Authority control under the Hamas government, they are almost completely ineffective.

Abu Moussa is every inch the traditional Bedouin mukhtar. He has two wives and 19 children, and on the belt of his robes he carries a well-greased shabriyeh, a traditional Bedouin dagger with a jewel-encrusted silver handle. He also has a small library of books on ancient coins and antiquities in English, German and Hebrew.

"I have a metal detector; it's 80 years old. My grandfather got it from the British. This is now my profession. I can tell everything. I am an expert -- Byzantine, Roman, Islamic, Canaanite," he said.

On a rocky ledge just below his home, there is a cave whose entrance has been carved into a fine stone doorway. This old tomb has been empty for decades, but in just a few minutes' searching among the rocks outside, Abu Moussa's children pick up more than a dozen items, including a rare Byzantine coin found by 7-year-old Mountasser. They hand the treasure to their father, who will sell it to the dealer next time he calls.

Artifacts found near Mountasser's West Bank vilage. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

S.F.'s newest consul enjoys being Bedouin, proud to be Israeli

Ishmael Khaldi, who will be Israel's first Bedouin diplomat, says his family's ties with its Jewish neighbors go back to the 1920s. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Ishmael Khaldi, who began life as a nomad, is first Muslim envoy to rise through ranks

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, November 24, 2006
Page A - 11

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Ishmael Khaldi lived in a Bedouin tent until he was 8 years old, walked 4 miles round trip to school each day and still goes home on weekends to what he calls the "Middle Ages" to tend to flocks of sheep.

But next Saturday, Khaldi will leave his tiny village of Khawalid -- population 450 -- in the northern Galilee region and fly to San Francisco to become Israel's first Bedouin diplomat and the nation's first Muslim to rise through the ranks of the Israeli foreign service.

Of the more than 1 million Israeli Arabs, only 170,000 are Bedouins, many of whom were once nomadic desert dwellers. In recent years, Arab radicals in the Israeli parliament and Islamic movements who deplore the existence of the Jewish state have dominated Israeli-Arab relations, and the 6-year-long Palestinian intifada has stretched their allegiance to Israel to a breaking point.

But Khaldi, while conceding that the situation of Arabs in Israel "is not perfect," is an unrepentant Israeli who says he is not betraying his Arab "brothers" by becoming the new Israeli consul to San Francisco.

"Many of us are proud to describe ourselves as Israelis. Everyone who lives here is an Israeli," Khaldi told The Chronicle in an exclusive interview on the eve of his departure for San Francisco. "Israel is in a clash with the Arab world, with our fellow Muslim brothers, with the Palestinians. It's a big challenge. But I am sure that Israel's enemies are not Arab culture, nor Arab heritage, nor the Muslim religion. It's a political situation."

Khaldi, 35, is no newcomer to the United States or the Bay Area. He arrived in the United States after the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000 and was soon in demand as a speaker at college campuses. "I'm a Bedouin and we are nomads, so I felt at home traveling coast to coast on a Greyhound bus. Twice," he said.

During his stay in the United States, Khaldi said he was shocked to discover that American students were unaware of Israel's large Arab minority and the fact they have the right to vote, elect members to parliament, and become judges, professors and senior army officers.

Khaldi said his family's ties with its Jewish neighbors go back to the days of the early Zionist pioneers from Eastern Europe who settled in the Galilee region in the 1920s.

"From the late 1920s until 1948 when the state was established, the first pioneers came and lived mainly in the north, building kibbutzim," or collective farms, Khaldi said. "The people who came were very sophisticated. They were mainly Yiddish speakers. ... Local Bedouins established very close relations with them, even though they were two different cultures and two different worlds with almost nothing in common. It's something that not many people know.

"My grandmother, who passed away only last year, spoke Yiddish. She was a shepherdess, she never went to school, but she had human contact almost every day with the people from (the next-door kibbutz) Kfar Hamaccabi. She worked with them while they were planting orchards."

Khaldi was born into a family of six brothers and five sisters. Each day after school, they tended to the family's sheep, goats and cows. Because the village only got running water and electricity five years ago, Khaldi did his homework hunched over a gas lamp. Such privations might have alienated the young man, but by the time he entered a prestigious Arab high school in Haifa at age 14, two of his brothers already were serving in the Israeli army.
"Of course, there is a lot of frustration, and we are facing a lot of problems. But to make it into hatred and a grudge? We must go one step forward."

Khaldi said there is still a long way to go before the Bedouin minority achieves full equality in Israeli society, but he noted that more Bedouins are graduating from high school, entering universities and getting better jobs than ever before.

"You can look at the differences and say: 'The government treats us as second- or third-class citizens,' or it can be a challenge. It's our challenge to use the differences and try to understand and combine the best of both worlds. The way is long. It's not easy," he said.
Khaldi first encountered anti-Zionist radicalism in high school, he said, and didn't like it. Once during a memorial day for Israel's fallen soldiers, Khaldi and two classmates stood at attention to mark two minutes of silent tribute. The gesture provoked derision and insults from fellow Arab students. "There was a clash with the rest of the Arab kids. They were not respectful," he said.

In following years, Khaldi was turned down twice for an Israeli Foreign Ministry training course before finally being accepted. Meanwhile, he acquired a bachelor's degree in political science from Haifa University and a master's degree in international relations from Tel Aviv University. He has served as a border police officer in Jerusalem and as an official in the Israeli Defense Ministry.

Khaldi also has begun a project called "Hike and Learn with Bedouins in the Galilee" that has brought thousands of young Jews to Khawalid to learn about Bedouin culture and history. He said these encounters inspired him to become a diplomat.

But even after an intensive six-month Foreign Ministry diplomatic training course, he says he still looks to village traditions for guidance.

"I come from a culture where negotiations are the best way to understanding," he said. "The tribes used to live and compete with each other and fight and kill each other, but at the end of the day they would have to make sulha (a peace pact). This is the way. ... At the end of the road, you need to find a common ground, you need to find a solution. Something that will satisfy both sides."

Khaldi is well aware that he will be treated with suspicion by Israeli critics but believes his story presents a true picture of modern Israel.

"I am always torn," he said. "I am torn between modernity and tradition. I am torn between two totally different worlds. I am Israeli above everything."

United in grief, Mideast kin say end 'madness'

NY DAILY NEWS
Sunday November 19, 2006

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - The father of an Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas
united with Palestinian families devastated by an Israeli military
attack in Gaza this month to issue a plea to stop what they called
"the madness" of mutual violence.

Noam Shalit, the father of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the soldier abducted
nearly five months ago, traveled to the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel
Aviv last week to meet the bereaved Palestinians and visit their
injured relatives being treated in Israel.

About 20 people were killed when Israeli artillery shells aimed at
rocket launch sites struck several Beit Hanoun homes, almost all of
them belonging to one family. Officials later acknowledged that a
malfunction caused the shells to veer off target.

"I know this will not bring about Gilad's release, that's not why I
went," Shalit told the Daily News. "I am not disconnected from what is
happening in Gaza, and I felt I had to visit as an act of
identification and empathy with the innocent Palestinian victims of
Israel's military actions in Beit Hanoun."

Three of the 40 wounded were transferred to the Tel Aviv hospital
after Israel offered medical assistance to the victims.

Usama Ahmed al-Athamna, who lost many family members in the attack,
including his wife and mother, said he appreciated the gesture and,
despite his grief, was praying for the soldier.

"I truly thank Gilad's father for the visit, and I pray that his son
is returned home safe and sound and that it will bring an end to the
tragedy we had at home," al-Athamna said.

Rasan Gasan, whose brother Basem died of his wounds Friday after being
injured in Beit Hanoun, said: "I want to thank Gilad's father for
coming to visit us. It breaks our hearts, more than they are already
broken, that this man's heart breaks for us.

"I hope his son is brought home soon, and I ask both governments:
Enough, stop. They are continuing negotiations through bloodshed when
it's better to sit at a table of peace and speak eye to eye. We can
reach an agreement through peace, not bloodshed," Gasan said.

Shalit also urged the Israeli and Palestinian governments to "end the
violence which brings more violence and hatred in a perpetual cycle
that must be broken. ... We are all victims of the same madness.

"From firing rockets toward populated centers to two terribly
erroneous shells, the common denominator is that the civilian
population pays the price," he added.

Shalit said he was sure the "vast majority" of Israelis and
Palestinians wanted an end to the fighting.

He said he had issued personal appeals to the Hamas leadership in
Syria to release his son but never got a reply. "In Damascus, the
Hamas leaders live well and apparently don't want to take any notice
of the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza," he
said.

Shalit was also critical of his own leaders.

"Judging from the results after five months, it's clear that from my
point of view the efforts of the Israeli government so far have been a
failure," he said.

Unconventional, but Orthodox

Jewish women in the West Bank know the language of outsourcing

Deena Porat is director of human resources at Citybook Services, a U.S. outsourcing firm that employs ultra-Orthodox women from the West Bank. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, November 17, 2006
Page D - 1

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Modiin Illit, West Bank -- When a major property company decided to purchase a prestigious Manhattan skyscraper a couple of years ago, its managers faced the challenge of reading through the 200-page contracts of each of the building's 300 tenants before they could finalize the deal.

It was the kind of back-office paralegal work that could have taken weeks and cost a small fortune. But thanks to the initiative of a New Jersey businessman, the work was carried out in a couple of days a third of the way around the world by a dedicated team of ultra-Orthodox Jewish women, at a fraction of the cost.

This work, known as lease abstracting, is one of the mainstays of Citybook Services Ltd, a company in the ultra-Orthodox -- or "haredi" -- township of Modiin Illit on the edge of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Citybook is a flagship company in Israel's fast-growing outsourcing sector, which takes advantage of the country's large immigrant community to provide English, French, Spanish and Dutch language back-office services to companies in the United States and Europe, including paralegal and accounting work, call centers, graphic design and software development.

Salaries are 40 to 50 percent lower in Israel than in the United States, and because of the time difference -- 10 hours later in Israel than in California -- work can be commissioned at the end of the working day in America, completed overnight during Israel's daytime hours and be ready for stateside clients by morning.

IDT, a Jerusalem company, leads the outsourcing sector, with 1,000 employees operating call centers for clients around the world in a wide variety of languages.

In a 2004 survey, consulting firm AT Kearney ranked Israel as one of the top 25 most-attractive places worldwide for outsourcing. In February 2005, the Economist ranked Israel in the top 20 and in September 2005, Red Herring magazine called Jerusalem a "new hotspot" for outsourcing.

"Israel is in a unique position, due to hundreds of thousands of immigrants from around the world," said Eli Kazhdan, a former chief of staff of the Ministry of Industry and Trade who now acts as a consultant to outsourcing companies. "This is where Israel has its competitive edge. We are able to cut costs without compromising on quality."

Citybook's arrival in Modiin Illit has not only benefited its clients, it has also set off a small social revolution, providing 150 jobs for women in the impoverished ultra-Orthodox sector, in which more than half of families are below the poverty line -- about $1,000 per month for a family of four -- and many of the men are full-time students in yeshiva seminaries.

"It brings them into the workforce in a non-coercive way, very much taking into account their religious sensitivities and sensibilities," said Kazhdan. "These people would not work in a Tel Aviv high-tech company, because it just doesn't fit with their lifestyle. Citybook has created a high-tech environment, which enables these workers to go from welfare to employment without compromising religious values."

Citybook provides the women with four months of training and salaries well above the minimum wage in a work environment that respects their conservative religious values as well as their needs as working wives -- such as short working hours and a room set aside with two hospital-standard breast pumps for nursing mothers.

Two more Israeli companies have followed Citybook to Modiin Illit, creating a total of 500 jobs in a community with a population of only 22,000.

"People think that to help the haredi community you need to concentrate on welfare programs, but the key to helping them is to give them the means to support themselves," said Mayor Yaakov Guterman, who visited Citybook recently.

The fast-growing town is situated just inside the West Bank, which means it is an illegal Israeli settlement in the eyes of most of the world. But Guterman says it is built entirely on land purchased for the purpose in 1967 and its position near a major highway midway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem means it is likely to be annexed to Israel in any future peace settlement.

Joe Rosenbaum, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish businessman from Lakewood, N.J., founded Citybook three years ago as an offshoot of Madison Title, an insurance and property services company that insures $5 billion in liabilities, also based in Lakewood.

The venture has been so successful that he is planning to create an additional 40 jobs for ultra-Orthodox workers in Jerusalem.

"I had this vision with all the global outsourcing going on all over the world," said Rosenbaum. "Employees from the orthodox community have unique qualities. There's a tremendous reliability, work ethic and commitment. They are very careful not to waste time and are extremely grateful for the opportunity afforded them, so they go way beyond the call of duty."

Yocheved Katz, Citybook's office manager, said the company began "as an experiment with 12 women doing research and checking titles for Madison, and grew from there."

"The ladies in New Jersey stopped doing the research. Now they are much more available for client service and other things, which really help the company over there," said Katz.

Chaya Milgraum, a 22-year-old mother of two originally from Worcester, Mass., said she began working at Citybook two years ago because she and her husband, who was then a full-time yeshiva student, "really needed it." Now she lives right next door and the journey from home to work takes just a few minutes.

"There was a little opposition from my parents and my parents-in-law, because they're not used to the woman going out to work, only the husbands go to work," said Milgraum. "At the beginning it was hard, but then they said, 'You know what, it's good for you -- you're getting out, you're taking care of yourself, and you feel good about going out to work.'

"It was very important for me to come somewhere with a haredi environment. It's easier to get along with everybody when you're all in the same ballpark. When I was single, I worked alongside my mother in a totally mixed office, with men and with non-Jews. It was very nice, but I do enjoy working in an all-women environment."

Ultra-Orthodox religious leaders are among those walking by female employees at the Modiin Illit office of Citybook Services. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Heart-broken victims united in bid for peace

Father of captured Israeli consoles Palestinians at hospital


Usama Ahmed al-Athamna (with beard) and Noam Shalit (right) talk with the media outside the Tel Aviv hospital where Israel is treating Palestinian civilians wounded in last week's shelling of Beit Hanoun in Gaza. Photo by Yedioth Ahronoth

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, November 17, 2006
Page A - 17

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- In a moving scene of reconciliation and hope, the father of the Israeli soldier whose capture started the current round of fighting in Gaza visited a Tel Aviv hospital Thursday to see Palestinians injured in last week's Israeli bombardment of Beit Hanoun.

And two Palestinians whose families were decimated by the attack joined Noam Shalit in offering prayers for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the recovery of the injured and an end to the holding of his son.

"I came in order to express my sympathy with the families from Beit Hanoun, who lost 23 of their loved ones and have a large number of injured here at the center," said Shalit after visiting the wounded Palestinians. His son, 19-year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit, was seized on June 25 in a cross-border operation that also killed two soldiers and wounded six others.

Usama Ahmed al-Athamna, who lost his wife, mother and 16 other family members in the Israeli artillery strike, said he was praying for the health and safe return of the Israeli soldier.

"I truly thank Gilad's father for the visit, and I pray that his son is returned home safe and sound and that it will bring an end to the tragedy we had at home," al-Athamna said.

Rasan Gasan, whose brother Basem died of his wounds in the hospital last Friday after being injured in Beit Hanoun, said, "I want to thank Gilad's father for coming to visit us. It breaks our hearts, more than they are already broken, that this man's heart breaks for us.

"I hope his son is brought him soon, and I ask both governments, enough, stop. They are continuing negotiations through bloodshed when it's better to sit at a table of peace and speak eye to eye. We can reach an agreement through peace, not bloodshed," Gasan said.

Shalit's visit to the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv came a week after Israel admitted that its artillery guidance system malfunctioned on Nov. 8, sending huge shells crashing into civilian homes in Beit Hanoun, killing 20 people. Three more subsequently died from their injuries. Three of the 40 wounded were transferred to a hospital in Tel Aviv the day after the attack after Israel offered medical assistance to the victims.

"I have met the families, and I can see that the people of Beit Hanoun are peace-seeking and not involved in terror, and they only want to provide for themselves," Shalit said.

"I feel that the Athamna family and the other families who lost their loved ones are exactly like the Slutzker family in Sderot and my family in the Galilee," he said, referring to the family of the woman killed by a Hamas rocket attack on Wednesday. "We are all victims of the same madness, the same incessant wars and illogical violence, from firing rockets towards populated centers, to two terribly erroneous shells, the common denominator is that the civilian population pays the price."

Early reports from Gilad Shalit's captors said he had been wounded and had received medical treatment, but since the first week of his capture the only information about him has been assurances by leaders of both Hamas and Fatah, the two major Palestinian political parties, that he is still alive. Egypt has been leading international efforts to secure his release, but so far without success.

Noam Shalit said after leaving the Israeli hospital that the injured Palestinian children lying unconscious were paying the price of "these useless wars." He urged the Israeli government and Palestinian leaders to "end the violence which brings more violence and hatred in a perpetual cycle that must be broken.

"We aren't looking to see who is to blame or who started it. I hope there will be developments in negotiations with a new Palestinian government that will allow for a fresh start when all this madness ends soon," Shalit said.

"It is time to end this affair. So much suffering has been caused since June 25 to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians," he said.

"One of the main obstacles in bringing Gilad home is that the Hamas leadership is in Damascus and unfortunately won't heed our calls. Unfortunately, they don't see the suffering of the Palestinian people, the residents of the Gaza Strip, and they are apparently living the good life in Damascus," Shalit said.

Barrier clogs West Bank olive harvest

"They never offered me any compensation. They just uprooted the trees and took them away." -- Abdullah Abdel Khatib, an olive farmer in the West Bank. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, November 13, 2006
Page A - 9

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Deir al Ghusun, West Bank -- Seventy-year-old Abdullah Abdel Khatib took a break from harvesting his olives in a hillside grove in the northern West Bank and gazed out at the spectacular view across northern Israel to the Mediterranean Sea 15 miles away.

"I was born in this village," he said. "This is my land, and so I have to be here."

But tending to his 10-acre olive grove is not as simple as it used to be. He lost about 360 of his 1,300 olive trees when the Israelis built their controversial security barrier right through his land. At this point just north of Tulkarem, the barrier veers sharply away from the "Green Line" -- the border between the West Bank and Israel -- and dives eastward, slicing off several square miles of Palestinian territory and effectively annexing it to Israel.

Half of Khatib's real estate and about 300 of his remaining trees ended up on the western side of the barrier, a 50-yard-wide strip containing a touch-sensitive wire mesh fence, two barbed-wire barriers, an anti-vehicle ditch, an intrusion-tracking dirt path and a military patrol road.

"They never offered me any compensation," he said. "They didn't offer any to my neighbors either. They just uprooted the trees and took them away."

In the four years since work began on the barrier, the annual autumn olive harvest has become a flash point for violence. Many olive harvesters have been attacked, beaten and even shot by Jewish settlers who claimed they suspected the Palestinians of using their labor as cover to approach the settlements and plan attacks.

Soldiers have prevented other farmers from picking the olives even when they have the correct permits, and have beaten or harassed the Palestinians when they refused to leave. After one such incident near Nablus recently, the Israeli army apologized -- but not before the family involved had lost a full day's work.

Still, despite the election of a Hamas government to lead the Palestinian Authority and the consequent freezing of most contacts between Palestinian and Israeli officials, all sides seem to be making an effort this year to reduce the tension so the olives can be collected successfully.

In June, the Israeli High Court ruled that Palestinian farmers must be permitted access to their land for the harvest. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz commissioned a report from the World Bank on the importance of the harvest, and ordered Israeli security personnel to protect farmers from harassment by unruly settlers.

"It is not possible to overestimate the importance of olives to the Palestinian economy," the World Bank report said. "Not only are olives the single biggest crop in what remains a largely agricultural economy, but they have deep cultural significance."

"The olive tree is strongly connected to our traditions, customs and existence on this land," said Shaker Judeh, a senior official at the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture. "It was also called the blessed tree and enjoys a religious status, as it is mentioned many times in the Holy Quran."

So far, things have been peaceful in the area where Khatib is picking his olives.

"This year, it was coordinated with Israeli forces to allow farmers to access their lands for the harvest, but many farmers are not granted permits," said Judeh. "They are giving more permits to the farmers and the owners, but there are still problems over people denied permits on the grounds of security."

Every day, Khatib and his neighbors pass large red warning signs in Arabic and Hebrew put up by the Israelis to mark a 100-yard exclusion zone on the Palestinian side of the barrier. The signs tell anyone entering the area not to carry firearms or approach the barrier without proper authorization.

Just next to Khatib's land is Gate 690, one of three crossings in the area that are opened twice a day so farmers authorized by the Israelis can tend their land on the other side. Israeli troops in full battle gear check Palestinian farmers passing through the gate.

Permits are hard to obtain, but Khatib has secured permission for his laborers to collect the olives from his trees across the barrier. More than 90 percent of the olives are used to make oil. It takes 9 to 13 pounds of olives to produce a gallon of olive oil, which his family uses or sells.

The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture is expecting a bumper crop -- as much as 35,000 tons of olive oil, compared with an average 25,000 in recent years. The bounty could throw a lifeline to Palestinians like Khatib, struggling with an extended economic crisis caused by the continued conflict with Israel and an extensive security clampdown.

"The Palestinian economy has come to the point of collapse," said Talal Dweikat, the local Palestinian governor. "There is real starvation and real suffering among the Palestinian people. Dozens of families cannot secure their daily needs."

The World Bank report estimated that olive trees account for nearly 45 percent of cultivated land in the Palestinian territory. About 100,000 people, it said, are dependent on the olive harvest for their livelihoods. But the Israeli barrier and security checkpoints, designed to clamp down on the movement of arms and suicide bombers, also have prevented olive oil and other produce from being exported abroad. The result has been a surplus of oil in the Palestinian territories, leading to a reduction in price that has further weakened the local agricultural economy.

Khaled Alayan, the mayor of Deir al Ghusun, said the barrier had transformed the lives of the villagers "into a nightmare."

"Having a permit does not ensure that we go through the gate. It depends on the mood of the soldier whether we pass through the gate or not," Alayan said. He said unemployment in the village had risen to around 60 percent, and the municipality was owed about $700,000 in unpaid water and electric bills.

"One main source of income for this village was that many of the people used to work inside Israel," he said. "One thousand families used to depend on the income from family members working inside Israel. Because of the wall, 1,000 families have lost their source of income."

Khatib said six of his seven sons used to work in Israel, but now are unemployed.

"We can see signs of the deterioration in the economic situation because women are selling their jewelry, and others are selling property. Many people in the village have become dependent on donations from other people or international organizations," said Alayan.

Among the organizations that have stepped in to help is the U.N. World Food Program, which has targeted Deir al Ghusun as part of a campaign to save the poorest Palestinian farmers from destitution by purchasing 1,500 tons of olive oil, at a cost of $4 million.

"We identify the poorest among the farmers, and we buy a quantity of olive oil which otherwise they couldn't sell and they couldn't store, and we redistribute this olive oil to our beneficiaries who are scattered over the West Bank and Gaza," said Arnold Vercken, the program's director for the Palestinian territories.

He said such purchases helped stabilize the market price, provided a much-needed cash injection for the "poorest among the poor" and gave Palestinians receiving food aid a high-nutrition product.

The olives picked by Khatib and his neighbors end up at the olive press in the center of their village, where Yousur Eid sat watching amid a roar of machinery as her olives were ground into paste beneath two huge, rolling stones. The paste was spread on straw mats and pressed to produce thick, green, fragrant oil, which she collected in a big plastic jerrican.

"I have 30 olive trees, which I share with another family," said the 75-year-old grandmother, keeping an eye on the precious liquid. "It took us a week to harvest the crop, and I get two-thirds of it. This looks like a good year. It looks like we will have about five or six gallons of oil, and I will use it to make moussakhan -- my favorite dish of bread, olive oil and chicken. You are invited to come and eat it with us."

Beating in Jerusalem ends gay Palestinian Americans' plans

One man in group allegedly attacked by angry Muslims

David Sheen, an activist from Oakland whose shirt reads, "My God is a lesbian," was arrested in Jerusalem before a gay pride rally. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Page A - 3

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- A group of gay Palestinian Americans canceled a planned pride march in East Jerusalem on Friday after one of them was beaten unconscious by a local man who said he was from the Waqf Muslim religious authority.

The beating incident occurred on the same day an Israeli gay pride rally went ahead as scheduled, though without a planned march through city streets. The march had been called off after threats by religious and right-wing opponents to mount huge counterdemonstrations. Only minor violence marred the event.

East Jerusalem was close to total lockdown Friday -- a combination of a three-day general strike called in mourning for the deaths in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun on Wednesday, and the resulting Israeli security alert to prevent retaliatory suicide attacks.

Israeli security officials said they had more than 80 specific intelligence warnings of planned terror attacks against Israeli targets and raised the alert level to Daled or "D," the highest. Israeli police clamped a total closure on the West Bank, preventing all Palestinians from entering Israel except those living in East Jerusalem.

In the East Jerusalem beating, two men -- one wielding a knife -- came looking for the group of gay Palestinian Americans who were staying at the Faisal Hostel near the Damascus Gate of the Old City. One of the assailants identified himself as being from the Waqf, the clerical trust that administers Muslim religious sites in the city.

"I'm pretty terrified right now," said Daoud, an MBA student from Detroit who declined to give his full name. "We left the hostel immediately, but when my friend went back to collect some things, they were waiting for him. They asked if he was with 'the homos' and then started beating him."

He said the victim, from Chicago, was badly beaten, knocked down a flight of stairs and left unconscious. The man, whose name was withheld for his safety, was taken to the El-Mokassed Hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment.

"It was very scary. These two guys came in and said they had heard we were planning to march. They drew a knife and said if we marched they would cut our heads off. They sounded like they meant it," he said.

Daoud said nine gay Palestinian Americans had come to Jerusalem to join the pride march. "Maybe I was just being naive. I heard about the pride rally, and I thought it would be nice for us to do something together as a gay community," he said. "We got a different kind of reception instead."

In America, he said, "you have some tolerance and appreciation and understanding of what it means to be gay and to be a Palestinian. We're discovering the hard way it's not so acceptable here."

Rotem Biran, 25, a hotel sales executive from Tel Aviv, said she was disappointed not to be able to march with the Palestinians from East Jerusalem. But by the time she arrived at the Faisal Hostel, Daoud and his friends had disappeared.

"Gay Palestinians are really afraid," she said. "It's not the same as being Jewish and gay. For them, it's dangerous. They can't really do anything openly in their own community because it's so strict, so they come all the way to Tel Aviv to be with other gay people."

Friday's rally, held at the Hebrew University sports stadium, was a low-key affair that passed off largely peacefully. More than 2,000 participants were protected by about 3,000 police officers. One ultra-Orthodox protester who managed to sneak into the event was arrested after he jumped onstage and began screaming anti-gay slogans.

Across town, California-born David Sheen, a founder of the East Bay City Repair project in Oakland, was one of 30 gay activists who were arrested after trying to march to the stadium where the rally was being held. Sheen, 32, wore a pink shirt bearing the words "My God is a lesbian," in Hebrew.

Sheen, who describes himself as an "eco-freako," now lives in southern Israel and builds houses from earth. He said it was important for gay people in Israel to rally and speak out "because we're beautiful. And because we live here, and these are our streets."

Noam Federman, an anti-gay religious activist, warned people not to touch the marchers for fear of catching AIDS and held a banner denouncing their "abomination." Five people with him were arrested after they were found carrying brass knuckles, knives and sticks.

"We want to prevent the gays from marching inside Jerusalem," said Federman. "Jerusalem is a holy city to the Jewish people. We waited 2,000 years to get the privilege of having Jerusalem in our hands -- not to desecrate the city."

Ultra-Orthodox rabbis, the Vatican and Muslim officials had all spoken out this week against the gay march through the streets of Jerusalem, a city holy to all three religions. Ultra-Orthodox Jews had staged rowdy protests all week and threatened violence if the march went ahead.

Author traces journey of `God's gold'

Says Temple icons hidden in W. Bank

BOSTON GLOBE | October 15, 2006
By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

MAR THEODOSIUS, West Bank -- Until today, the main claim to fame of this sleepy monastery, home to 10 nuns on the edge of the Judean wilderness in the West Bank, was the tradition that said the Three Wise Men slept in the caves here after visiting the infant Jesus Christ in Bethlehem.

Now, a new book contends that Mar Theodosius is the last hiding place of one of the greatest treasures of antiquity: the gold and silver vessels of the Temple in Jerusalem.

British archeologist Sean Kingsley said he followed the journey of the legendary vessels for the first time since they disappeared from public view more than 1,500 years ago and traced them to their current location in this walled monastery east of Bethlehem in the Palestinian West Bank.

Kingsley's critics say there is no evidence to support his thesis, and plenty of evidence that it's ludicrous.

The vessels in question include some of the icons of biblical Judaism -- the seven-branched gold candelabrum, bejewel ed Table of the Divine Presence, and a pair of silver trumpets.

Many people, including Israeli government officials, believe the Temple vessels are hidden somewhere in the Vatican vaults. In 1996, Religious Affairs Minister Shimon Shetreet asked officially for the pope to return them. The Vatican denied the vessels were there.

Kingsley argues that the vessels were taken from Rome when it was sacked by the Vandals in AD 455.

In his new book, ``God's Gold: The Quest for the Lost Temple Treasure of Jerusalem," published in Britain by John Murray and in the United States by Harper Collins next spring, Kingsley describes what he says was the odyssey of the priceless haul: from Jerusalem to Rome and back again via Carthage and Constantinople, to what he says is its final resting place at the Greek Orthodox monastery of Mar Theodosius on the edge of the Judean desert, in the village of Ubadiyah, about 6 miles east of Bethlehem.

Kingsley holds a doctorate in the arch eology of the Holy Land from Oxford University and is a visiting fellow at the Research Centre for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at the University of Reading. He is managing editor of Minerva, the International Review of Ancient Art and Archaeology, and was one of the archeologists who discovered the largest trove of sunken treasure ever recovered off the coast of Israel.

Kingsley says his research suggests that the precious vessels were hidden in the caves under Mar Theodosius to escape the sacking of Jerusalem by Muslim invaders in AD 614.

Nuns at the monastery said there was no treasure buried at Mar Theodosius, which was itself destroyed during the same Muslim invasion and left abandoned until the late 19th century. During a visit to the caves beneath the monastery, a reporter was told that no precious artifacts had ever been recovered from the site, probably because it was left in ruins for nearly 1,300 years and any valuables there were looted by hermits and grave robbers.

Israeli specialists scoffed at Kingsley's theories.

``I've been there several times studying the skeletons of monks who were massacred by the Persians in the seventh century," said Joe Zias, an Israeli anthropologist and archeologist. ``It doesn't have any such treasure, and if it did it was plundered by the Arabs or Persians centuries ago."

The story of the vessels has long fascinated historians. According to Josephus, a first-century Roman-Jewish historian, 50 tons of gold and silver vessels were plundered from the Temple by the Roman Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus during the conquest of Jerusalem in AD 70.

``Contemporary sources show that it survived on public display in the Temple of Peace in the Roman Forum from AD 75 into the early fifth century. Then it suddenly disappeared. Who stole God's gold?" Kingsley said in an interview.

According to his research, it was Gaiseric, king of the Vandals.

``In AD 455, Gaiseric looted and burnt Rome in 14 days and threw everything he could, including the Temple treasures, into ships and took them to the Temple of Carthage," he said. ``They would not have liquidated the loot. It gave them power."

``In AD 534, the emperor Justinian brought the Vandal king into Constantinople. The records show that they resurrected the triumphal procession in AD 71. The historian Procopius of Ceasaria clearly describes the treasures of Jerusalem being paraded at the head of this triumph."

But the treasure did not remain in Constantinople for very long.

``The emperor Justinian was a student of classical antiquity, and he was aware that every civilization that controlled the Temple treasure had eventually been consumed by it. Fearful, he sent the treasure back to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in around AD 560," said Kingsley.

Procopius reported that a Jewish court adviser warned Justinian about the dangers of keeping the vessels. The emperor ``became afraid and quickly sent everything to the sanctuaries of the Christians in Jerusalem, " Procopius wrote.

During a subsequent Persian invasion, Kingsley argues, a monk called Modestus from the monastery at Mar Theodosius found himself in charge of the priceless vessels and hid them in the isolated desert caves at the monastery.

Kingsley said he peered over the wall of the monastery and saw evidence of archeological looting in the area, but hoped the Temple treasures -- if they are there -- would remain undisturbed.

Palestinians losing faith in Hamas

Trade has dwindled; government unable to fulfill its functions

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, October 9, 2006
Page A - 1

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Bethlehem, West Bank -- Mohammed Fathi looked hopefully at the trickle of pedestrians coming through the Israeli checkpoint at the main entrance to Bethlehem and let out a sigh. The assortment of necklaces hanging on his arm was growing heavy, and there seemed to be little chance of making any sales before he had to head home for the iftar, the meal marking the end of the day's Ramadan fast.

"A year ago, I would sell between 100 and 200 necklaces a week -- now I'm lucky if I sell 10," said Fathi, 23, who has been peddling trinkets to Bethlehem's tourists since he dropped out of school a decade ago.

Fathi watched in alarm as the tourist trade dwindled under the government led by Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority Presidents Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. The city's struggling economy all but collapsed from the five-year Palestinian uprising known as the intifada, the frequent Israeli military incursions and, finally, the construction of the grim security barrier that has severed Bethlehem from nearby Jerusalem and the rest of Israel and the West Bank.

When the chance came to replace the incompetent and corrupt Fatah government in January, Fathi -- like many nonaffiliated Palestinians -- voted for Hamas. Nine months later, the economic and political crisis has reached the point where he pines for the days of Arafat's cronies.

"I voted for Hamas, but I wouldn't vote for them again," said Fathi. "Look how my situation is now. Of course, Fatah are corrupt people, but at least we see something from them. There is gasoline, there is some food. There is some help. We know they take 80 percent, but at least we see 20 percent. ... I don't think any of the people here would vote for Hamas again. There is no money, there is nothing."

Before it won parliamentary elections, Hamas earned its popularity among ordinary Palestinians because it ran schools, hospitals and other social services without the corruption that riddled Fatah. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, more than 140,000 government workers -- about one-third of the working population -- have not received salaries since March, the result of an economic boycott imposed on Hamas by Israel, the United States and most Western countries because of its refusal to recognize Israel, give up terrorism or honor past peace agreements.

The Hamas government thought it would be able to bypass the boycott with support from sympathetic governments led by Iran, but the cash has not lived up to the promises.

Government schools have been shut since the start of the new school year in early September, the result of a strike by teachers who have not been paid since before the summer. Unpaid police are eking out a living by moonlighting or running protection rackets and debt-collection services.

The price of diesel has almost doubled in the past year, and gasoline has gone up by 20 percent. Crime is rising. Armed, unemployed men -- some of them nurtured during the intifada -- have begun using their weapons to hold up gas stations and other easy prey.

In the smart Ararat neighborhood of Beit Sahour, Bethlehem's neighboring town, Dina Awwad's imposing house was burgled last month, and all the jewelry and cash were stolen.

"We are totally depressed," she said. "The gunmen are using the decline in the economic situation to rob people. It came as a complete surprise. We didn't even have an alarm."

For months, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas have been engaged in fruitless talks on a unity government, but Hamas refuses to recognize Israel -- a position Haniyeh emphasized in a fiery speech Friday in Gaza City.

"We will not change our position on the issue of recognizing Israel, and any member of Hamas who recognizes Israel will leave the movement," said Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas foreign minister.

A poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center in late September suggested Hamas was losing the support it gained in January's election. The poll showed that 55.9 percent of Palestinians support the formation of a national unity government as the best way out of the current crisis. Moreover, 32 percent said they would vote for Fatah if elections were held today, while 21.9 percent said they would vote for Hamas. The sample size was 1,200 and the margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.

Last week, the simmering tensions boiled over into gunbattles on the streets of Gaza between warring Fatah and Hamas forces that left 12 Palestinians dead.

Bethlehem once bustled with Christian tourists. Figures kept by the Palestinian Tourist Police show that on an average day in September, only 239 foreigners visited, compared with more than 1,000 a day one year ago, and many thousands before the intifada.

Down Manger Street, the main road leading to the historic Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity where Jesus was born, the businesses told their own story. Most were shuttered. A handwritten sign at the gas station said: "Closed -- No Gas -- No Diesel."

Last Monday, masked Fatah gunmen took to Bethlehem's streets, shooting in the air, to impose a general strike intended to increase the pressure on Hamas to capitulate or step down. The house of the Hamas mayor of the neighboring village of Doha was fire-bombed, and a devout Muslim who lives in Bethlehem discovered a bomb planted under the seat of his car, which had to be defused by police.

Mahdi Abdul Hadi, director of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, warned that "the Palestinian people will go out to the streets to topple the government" if it did not resign. The growing strikes, demonstrations and now gunbattles appear to be bearing out his prediction.

"If Hamas would recognize Israel, everything would be OK, but the problem is that Hamas doesn't want to talk with Israel," said Fathi, the trinket seller. "I never went to school or university, I'm not an educated man, but I understand one thing: There is no way to reach an agreement or fix the problem between us and Israel without talking to each other.

"When I voted for Hamas, I didn't vote about the situation between Israel and the Palestinians. I voted for them to deal with the situation inside Palestine, between the people and the government," he said. "Everybody thought Hamas was good, not like Fatah. I thought we needed a change. I just need to make money, I just need to live. I just need something to make me feel I'm not like an animal. I don't want to feel like I'm a dog, or in a prison."

Using power of the Internet to promote peace

One man's quest involves software to resolve disputes



Yair Amichai-Hamburger, who has developed conflict-resolution computer software, at the "Separation Barrier" between Israel and the West Bank. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday, October 8, 2006
Page F - 3

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- While the Internet has become notorious as a forum for spreading messages of violence and terrorism, Yair Amichai-Hamburger believes it could become a key tool in promoting peace.

Amichai-Hamburger, an Israeli social-industrial psychologist who has written widely on the impact of the Internet on well-being, is developing new software and an Internet platform he hopes will become a cybergateway to conflict resolution around the world.

"The Internet creates a protected environment for users where they have more control over the communication process," said Amichai-Hamburger. "The Internet's unique qualities may help in the creation of positive contact between rival groups."

The new Internet platform is intended to enable groups from opposing sides in conflicts to make contact as the first step toward peacemaking. Amichai-Hamburger believes the use of the Internet for such encounters will revolutionize "people-to-people" contacts which have been used to reduce prejudice and conflict for the past half-century, but with mixed results.

From racial strife in mid-20th century America to apartheid in South Africa, Protestant-Catholic relations in Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, social scientists and public policymakers have advocated "people-to-people" encounters as a key to peacemaking. Positive encounters between groups in conflict could break down barriers, create better understanding and serve as the basis for better relations in future, they contended.

Amichai-Hamburger cited the landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that outlawed segregated U.S. schools. "The basic idea behind the decision of the Supreme Court was the psychological understanding that the situation could not continue. That if you want to have one nation, you can't break it up into ghettos. It was assumed that you have to have people meet each other, to see and learn the differences and the beauty of each group and their culture," said Amichai-Hamburger.

"One of the problems of intergroup contact is that members may approach it, and experience during it, high intergroup anxiety -- that is anxiety as a group member about meeting members of the other group," said Professor Miles Hewstone of Oxford University, whose theories on the "contact hypothesis" have been used to enhance contacts between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. "Contact works, when it does, by reducing such anxiety."

"I agree with Dr. Amichai-Hamburger that the Internet could be a major tool in conflict resolution," Hewstone said in a telephone interview. "I think he has got an interesting idea here that's worth pursuing."

Hewstone said he tried to create a similar computer-based platform for dialogue between Protestant and Catholic schoolchildren in Northern Ireland, but was prevented from doing so by strict British laws for protecting children's privacy that restrict external access to school Intranet systems.

"You can imagine the circumstances under which people would be more willing to divulge more personal information more quickly because they are hiding behind a computer screen, but it's still a leap of faith from there to whether they would do that in everyday life and whether it would impact on their face-to-face relations with people from the other group," he said.

The classic expression of the theory behind these encounters was "the contact hypothesis," coined by Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport in his 1954 book "The Nature of Prejudice," in which he suggested that contact between different groups would lessen prejudice.

Allport's theories had a major impact on integrated housing projects and desegregated school systems in the United States, and were used to break down the color bar in the U.S. Army, considered a model of integration for other institutions.

But more than half a century of interracial, interfaith and cross-political encounters have not always produced the desired effect. Studies of encounters in conflict situations around the world have suggested that the "contact hypothesis" works only when a range of conditions are satisfied. The contact must be pleasant, it must be fairly intimate and not casual, the participants need to perceive they are of equal status, and it must involve cooperation between groups working toward a mutually agreed goal.

Amichai-Hamburger said that use of the Internet not only reduced the anxiety that could sabotage any in-person encounter, it could also help to create near-perfect conditions for Allport's "contact hypothesis" to occur.

His theories, which are attracting increasing attention from psychologists and the high-tech industry, have applications for resolving a range of conflicts from war zones to corporate disputes.

Amichai-Hamburger, editor of "The Social Net: Understanding Human Behavior in Cyberspace," is a leading expert on the influence and use of the Internet and has advised major corporations, public service providers and political parties. After several years as vice chairman of the psychology department at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, he begins work this month as head of the Bezeq International Research Center for the study of the Psychology of Internet Use at the Inter-Disciplinary Center in Herlizya, a private Israeli university.

Although his project does not yet have its own Web site, he is overseeing a team of programmers, and is trying to raise funds from corporations that "have shown an interest in sponsoring the project," Amichai-Hamburger said without elaborating. When it is up and running, he said, access will be strictly controlled; group leaders, experts in intergroup contact and psychologists will be online with participants, who will be restricted to those committed to the aims of the encounters.

He said use of the Internet would help overcome the practical difficulties of bringing together people from warring factions. Since the collapse of the Oslo peace process, Israelis and Palestinians have been unable to engage in people-to-people projects such as Seeds of Peace because of the security barriers Israel has erected around the West Bank and Gaza.

Amichai-Hamburger said Internet encounters have proved to become much more intimate more quickly than face-to-face meetings, and people felt much more relaxed sitting at home with their computers than in a formal group. In addition, people are now accustomed to learning and communicating via the keyboard.

"For a long time, people have used the Internet for e-learning. It's quite comfortable for people to sit in their house and study through the Internet. And we know that millions of people around the world are using the Internet to communicate with others," he said.

Amichai-Hamburger said he hoped the new platform would be launched with the support of political and community leaders from all sides, whose backing would encourage their constituents to participate. It will contain a database drawing on past encounter experiences -- including failures -- as well as cultural information about the groups for participants to study before entering the dialogue.

Contacts will begin at text-only level in order to reduce the anxiety caused by appearing in public, and also in order to increase the "salience" or sense of group identity which studies have shown is crucial to the eventual success of the encounter.

"We want to change people's stereotypes," said Amichai-Hamburger. "We want people to generalize from their positive experience to their whole perception of the other group. The Internet can become a major tool in bringing about world peace."

Israeli policy divides Palestinian families

Immigration crackdown in West Bank

BOSTON GLOBE
September 23, 2006

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

EL-BIREH, West Bank -- Nariman Yazbak and her 2-year-old daughter, Salma, left their home in the West Bank town of El Bireh last April for a routine visit to relatives in Jordan.

Six months later, she is still trying to return. Yazbak's husband, Rami, a human resources specialist at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah, has petitioned the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government, the Israeli Army, and even written to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for help. He has filled out all the forms and presented all the necessary documentation, but no one will process the paperwork.

The Yazbaks are among the thousands of Palestinians caught in what human rights activists call a bureaucratic nightmare that has divided families, prevented visitors of Palestinian origin from visiting relatives in the West Bank, and is inducing many long-term West Bank residents to leave their homes.

Israel, which controls all the international borders leading to the West Bank, says it is not trying to break up Palestinian families. It says it is merely implementing existing immigration law and preventing foreign nationals from living in the country illegally.

But Palestinians, many of whom were born abroad and do not have Palestinian identity cards, say the Israelis suddenly clamped down after the January election of the Hamas government, when Israel broke off all ministry-level contacts with the Palestinian Authority after years of allowing them to live in the West Bank on three-month tourist visas.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says in a report issued in July that the result of the policy is ``the forced break-up of the family unit."

The report, ``Perpetual Limbo: Israel's freeze on unification of Palestinian families in the occupied territories," suggests that the Israeli crackdown is part of a broader policy to limit the growth of the Palestinian population ``by preventing the entry of spouses and children of residents, and by stimulating emigration from the area."

The Yazbaks say the result is that they will probably be forced to move abroad.

Rami Yazbak is a Palestinian, born in the West Bank, who returned in early 2000 with his Spanish-born Palestinian wife, Nariman, to their ancestral homeland.

``It was a dream to live in Palestine and to have my family, wife, and kid here," he said.

No one knows how immigrants like Nariman Yazbak can be granted Palestinian permanent residence, which under the Oslo peace accords requires the agreement of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Since the second intifadah erupted in 2000, there have been no contacts between the relevant ministries. So, like thousands of others in a similar position, for the past six years she has been leaving the country every three months and returning with a new three-month tourist visa issued at the border by the Israelis.

Until now.

In April, as Nariman and Salma returned as usual via the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge linking Jordan to the West Bank, they were stopped by immigration officials and turned back. Their passports were stamped ``Entry Denied." Rami Yazbak has contacted every Israeli and Palestinian official he can find, but so far without success.

``I need my family," he said. ``I'm giving it one last chance. We might appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, but I'm afraid they will reject it. Otherwise we will have to go to Spain and start again from zero."

For Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship, the troubles began at the start of the second intifadah in 2000, when Israel stopped allowing Jordanian-Palestinians to re enter the West Bank if they were effectively residing there.

Wahel Hushia, 35, from the West Bank village of Katana, married a Palestinian woman from Jordan in 1999. In 2001, his wife went to visit her parents in Jordan with their baby daughter, and the Israelis never allowed them back. Hushia visits them every few months, whenever he can afford the fare, and their West Bank-born daughter, now 6, comes to stay with his family for a few weeks per year.

``We cannot have any more children, because if they are born in Jordan, the Israelis will never let them in," Hushia said. ``I last saw them four months ago."

The Palestinian Ministry for Civil Affairs reports that it has received more than 120,000 requests for family reunification since September 2000, which the Israelis refuse to process. In a few cases, after intervention by B'Tselem and other human rights groups, Israel has granted a few individual requests on a piecemeal basis, as ``exceptional cases."

East Jerusalem lawyers Ibrahim Khoury and Ehab Abu Gosh said there are dozens of similar cases before the Israeli courts.

Khoury cited the case of one family in Beit Hanina, an area of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, whose members left for the United States in 1967 but maintain extensive property holdings and visit each year to see relatives. He said the father of the family, a US citizen, was recently detained on arrival at Ben-Gurion airport and held in the cells there for three weeks before an Israeli judge ordered him released pending a final decision on his status.

The US Consulate-General in Jerusalem, which handles relations with the Palestinian territories, said it was receiving several new complaints every week from Palestinian-Americans who were being denied entry after living in the West Bank for years.

Sam Bahour, a prominent West Bank businessman, has lived in El-Bireh since 1995. He applied to Israel for residency in the West Bank before the Palestinian Authority even existed but never received a reply. For the past 11 years, he said, he has traveled to and from the West Bank via the Israeli-controlled borders with Jordan on a three-month tourist visa. But the last time he went to the Israeli authorities they refused to extend it for more than one month.

He was given until Oct. 1 to leave the West Bank, and the Israeli soldier who stuck the visa in his passport scribbled ``final permit" across it in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

``I hope to find the decision-makers within the Israeli system and resolve the issue," said Bahour. ``If not, I will be separated from my family. My work has already been affected. I have been unable to take on any new projects in the past 45 days."

``I won't violate the visa and stay here illegally," he said. ``I won't give the Israelis that gift."

Sabine Hadad, spokeswoman for the Israeli Interior Ministry, denied there was any policy change.

``There has been a clarification of the instructions," Hadad said. `` . . . When a foreigner, from the USA or any other country, comes to the border and they know they are coming to visit the territories, they need a visitors' permit for the territories, from the army."

ISRAELI FORCE TO TRIPLE IN SOUTHERN LEBANON

CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Israel's Security Cabinet gives army another month to force Hezbollah fighters north of the Litani River and halt missile attacks

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Page A-1

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Zarit, Israel -- Israeli leaders decided on Wednesday to triple the country's ground invasion force in Lebanon and extend the fight against Hezbollah to the Litani River, about 18 miles across the border.

Justice Minister Haim Ramon said the huge ground operation is necessary to achieve "the cessation of the Katyusha rockets and an alteration of the status quo in southern Lebanon." The army was given another month to complete the mission.

The deployment about-face was widely expected after a month of aerial attacks and commando raids failed to halt Hezbollah rocket fire bombarding northern Israel. It came a day after Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski, deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, was named to replace Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, head of Israel's northern command, in overseeing the Lebanon campaign.

"This operation must be won. We have no choice. It is a war of no option that was forced upon us. The consequences of this war are far-reaching for the state of Israel and for the entire region," Ramon said.

Israel's Security Cabinet debated the new battle plan for six hours in the shadow of news -- not released to the public until midnight on Wednesday -- that the nation's forces had suffered the worst losses since the fighting began: 15 dead and 25 wounded.

Until Wednesday, Israel had hoped to overcome the 3,000-strong Hezbollah fighting units with just 6,500 Israeli ground troops, backed by heavy artillery fire, aerial bombardment and armored divisions. But four weeks into the campaign, Israeli forces are still taking heavy losses in Hezbollah strongholds such as Aita al-Shaab, a Shiite village a mile across the border that they have been trying to capture since the first days of the fighting.

The Cabinet decided to hold the final order for a day or two to see whether diplomatic moves at the United Nations could bring about a cease-fire that would force Hezbollah to disarm -- a move so far rejected by the Lebanese government.

Michael Oren, fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem think tank, and author of "Six Days of War," about the 1967 conflict, said the decision should have been made three weeks ago and seemed designed to improve Israel's position in the post-battle diplomacy.

"They are going to try and reach the Litani River and expand Israel's leverage in negotiations, in the hope that Israel can hold out not just for the deployment of the Lebanese army, but for the deployment of an international force," said Oren. "Israel can't trust the Lebanese army to keep Hezbollah out because the army is half-Shiite."

Yaakov Amidror, former head of Israel's National Defense College, agreed the move should have been made weeks ago.

"This is the only decision that can help us reach our goals," said Amidror. "One is the cessation of the firing of Katyusha rockets into Israel, or at least 90 to 95 percent of them. The other is to severely cripple the Hezbollah forces, which, up until now, have felt almost no harm. It will also make the other side think twice before starting a war with Israel."

Oren said the hesitant handling of the war so far might reflect the absence of ex-soldiers in Israeli government.

"This is the first Israeli war where all the decisions have been made by a civilian government with no military experience," he said. "In the past, there have been complaints that Israeli governments have been dominated by generals and submissive to the military. This one time, when the civilians control the military, a sizable proportion of the population is dissatisfied with their handling of the war and would have preferred a more robust approach."

On Wednesday night, about 20,000 Israeli troops, together with long columns of tanks, armored cars and military bulldozers, were snaking their way up through the winding roads near the Israel-Lebanon border, poised to pour into the battlefield.

Dozens of tanks, armored cars and military support vehicles lined the road near the border village of Zarit, near the spot where a Hezbollah attack on an Israeli patrol on July 12 sparked the current conflict. Israeli reservists sat inside the armored vehicles, sheltering from the midday sun, playing backgammon or trying to catch some sleep.

The troops were forbidden from giving their full names under army regulations. Shai, a 24-year-old student from Ashdod, said he was called up more than a week ago and was still waiting to be sent into Lebanon.

Two hours later, the same road was empty, except for discarded plastic bottles and food wrappers marking the spot where the tank brigade had been waiting.

Farther along the road, the same scene was repeated several times. Either long lines of military vehicles and waiting soldiers, or discarded trash where they once stood. In some places, the roadway bore the scars of heavy half-track vehicles.

Around a corner near Manara, a convoy of 10 tanks were rumbling up the road, interspersed with fragile-looking family vehicles trying to overtake them on the hairpin bends.

A few hundreds yards across the border, Israeli artillery shells could be seen crashing into targets in the Lebanese villages where heavy fighting continued Wednesday between Israeli and Hezbollah forces. The Israeli hits sent huge clouds of white, black or brown smoke billowing into the sky, depending on the target.

Close up, the villages that served as Hezbollah strongholds clearly showed the damage of nearly a month of Israeli fire. Many of the buildings have been reduced to burned-out skeletons. Others have gaping holes, like blackened, toothless mouths. Many landmarks are simply missing, blown up by Israeli forces.

From the upper floors of some of the few remaining buildings, there were flashes of gunfire from Hezbollah forces putting up fierce resistance against the Israeli invaders. Israeli helicopters hovered behind the lines, unleashing missiles that whistled overhead before exploding with deadly force across the border.

As the fighting continued, two particularly large clouds of white smoke apparently signaled direct hits on large stores of weapons. Maj. Avi Ortal, chief of operations for the Alexandroni infantry brigade, said his soldiers had discovered more than 150 Katyusha rockets in a single house in the nearby village of Rahamin two days ago.

Ortal, a lawyer in civilian life, said his soldiers had no doubts about their duty despite losing three men last week in a battle with Hezbollah.

"I feel that the war is very moral. The fact that Hezbollah is sitting on our borders, kidnapping our soldiers, invading our sovereignty, threatening the civilian population on the borders -- is something that we had to stop," he said as plumes of black and brown smoke billowed into the air behind him from Hezbollah villages where his men were fighting, supported by Israeli artillery.

Ortal said Wednesday's Cabinet decision had no immediate effect on his men. "In terms of the mission that our brigade gets, it is very clear and we will do it. This decision has not changed anything for us," he said.